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Photo: Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer has made a tough call – and a mistake. Her instincts and intentions are spot-on, but her action is missing the crucial elements of time-boxing and motivation.

In a memo to the company's entire workforce from HR head Jackie Reses last Friday, all Yahoos were informed that they would be expected to cease working remotely and report to a Yahoo! office on a daily basis starting in June. Mayer was immediately slammed as short-sighted by many for this move, which cuts against the trend of increasing employee autonomy in choosing where and when they work.

However, by some accounts, Yahoo!'s approximately 500 remote-only workers have become a collection of disconnected individuals who aren't communicating and collaborating with the company's other 12,000 employees. One insider even said "There were all these employees and nobody knew they were still at Yahoo!." That same person underscored the business problem that created, saying "This is a collaborative business" and that many of these isolated remote workers "weren't productive."

Mayer was hired, and is working, to revive Yahoo!. She is trying to create some energy in an organization that rested too long on its in initial successes, falling out of touch with its customers and behind its competitors. Mayer is attempting to return Yahoo! to a vibrant place where colleagues work closely with each other to create new services that delight customers. To do so, she must reboot Yahoo!'s employee network.

Bringing employees physically together is a widely-recognized tactic for getting them in the same mindset and working toward common objectives in a manner that reflects shared values. Executive retreats, departmental gatherings, and team off-sites are tools commonly-used to get people mentally on the same page so that they may row the boat together. Mayer's action to bring isolated Yahoos together again is absolutely the right thing to do.

However, this move should have been communicated as a temporary policy change, rather than the open-ended edict that was announced in the memo. Mayer should have said (via Reses) that the work-from-home ban would be lifted if and when she sees substantial evidence – in the form of measurable, positive business results –that Yahoos are communicating and collaborating within the employee network. Doing so would create positive motivation for Yahoo! employees to reconnect, rebuild and expand their connections within the company. Work together, show results, and you'll be rewarded with reinstatement of the privilege of working off-site again.

It's not too late for Marissa Mayer to correct her mistake. She can send another email to Yahoo! employees containing the message I articulated in the preceding paragraph. That simple action just might turn the negative reaction Yahoos have had to her edict into a positive, motivating force that will help the company reinvigorate one of it's most important assets – the Yahoo! employee network.